Thoughts on New & Returning Geek TV

So, new TV has arrived and most of the existing shows we watch are back. Since I'm most interested in them, I'll concentrate on the SF&F & supers shows.

New Shows

Timeless: It's fun fluff, it's clear it won't ever be more than that, but I like the fact that time is changing in small to moderate ways. I hate "time patrol" type media where changing the past possible but the protagonists prevent all such changes. It's about the same level of quality as Dark Matter, but more light hearted.

Falling Water: This very much looks like the network rip-off of Sense8. The acting is excellent, but that's about it. It has the dual problems of looking very much like the sort of show where the creators are making up what's going on as they go along and facilitate this by throwing up lots of oddities and then only coming back to some of them (a technique that I'm told Lost used a lot). The result is sloppy, slapdash storytelling. Also, the ultra-rich white guy (Bill Boerg) who looks to be completely creepy and vile initially seems to be set up like he might be helpful and a source of correct information rather than being the villain he so clearly should be. The acting is good enough that if both problems turn out to be untrue, I'll watch it, but I expect both will be true.

Frequency: It's based on an OK 2000 film of the same name, but with the protagonist changed from female to male and more characters of color. It's also pretty good. I expected it to suck and it really didn't. I'm shocked that roughly 1/5 as many people watched it as watched Timeless (both shows are on the CW). I hope it isn't cancelled and very much look forward to watching more of it. Like the film, it's a show where the past changes and thus the present does to, which I'm definitely a sucker for, but it's also (so far) well done.

Returning Shows

Lucifer: It remains much fun and surprisingly well done.

The Flash: I watched the first new episode of The Flash, and am done with that show unless I hear remarkably different information about the rest of the season. I thought most of the 2nd season was good, with the exception of the dull and stereotypical crazed serial killer villain (Zoom). However, doing Flashpoint for season 3, (where Barry Allen goes and changes the timeline to save his mother from being murdered) sounded interesting, and I was only concerned that they might make the timeline changes too grim. Then, in the course of the first episode of the season, for reasons that made little sense, Barry does not merely decide to go back in time again to reverse the changes, but has to beg a villain to kill his mother (in the past). Then, the (mostly) restored timeline turns out to be notably crappier than his original one. This was a show I was watching because it was fun and lighter than Arrow. When a show simultaneously chickens out of an interesting premise, reverses the changes for nonsensical reasons, and also goes for being as absolutely grim as possible, I'm done.

Arrow also looks to be getting grimmer, but I'm used to that with Arrow, and while it's less good than before, it's not (yet) vastly so. I'm not hopeful, but will keep watching (for now).

Supergirl: I stopped watching halfway through the first season because it was both not very well done, and completely unimaginative and unwilling to make interesting choices. I'll likely watch the start of this season, but I'm very far from hopeful.

Legends of Tomorrow: It isn't back yet, but it was dreadful enough that if it's not either more fun or better, I'm not watching more. OTOH, unlike Supergirl, I quite like some of the characters, and it was less unimaginative than Supergirl, so maybe

The best show I'm not watching

Luke Cage. I watched the first episode and that's it. I thought Jessica Jones was brilliant, but difficult to watch. However, there's a bit more distance to watching a struggle against a single super-powered abuser than there is in a struggle against entrenched crime and injustice committed by ordinary, utterly vile, human beings. I didn't watch The Wire, because while clearly excellent (I watched one episode), it was too brutally violent for me. I was up for all of the first episode of Luke Cage, except for seeing someone beaten to death. I thought about this episode for a while, and decided both that if the first episode is a bit too violent for me, this guarantees the rest of the show will on average be worse, and also that I really don't have any interest in watching a show quite that violent and grim.

Is Lucifer related much to Mike Carey's comic?Is Lucifer related much to Mike Carey's comic?

It seems likely that the showrunners and writers glanced at an issue or two or maybe just read the wikipedia entry on the comic - that's about the degree of similarity. Lucifer runs a nightclub & he's accompanied by the demon Maze (Mazikeen). Not much beyond that, but it's surprisingly good, light, impressively sex positive and generally well done fun fluff.

The treatment of Christianity is odd and interesting - god is basically Lucifer's abusive dad, and Lucifer (and the other angels) also have a mother.

I haven't seen it, but this is what an author I know thought of Supergirl

Interesting, and not inaccurate. I just watched the 2nd season premier, and it was both better than first season and astoundingly better than the 3rd season premier of The Flash.